


Five Times Enlightened

by theharellan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - All New Faded For Her, Elvhenan, Gen, Minor Character Death, Other, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22531366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theharellan/pseuds/theharellan
Summary: He has known Wisdom since the world was young, and each time they meet he comes away with a lesson.
Relationships: Solas & Wisdom (Dragon Age), Solas/Wisdom
Kudos: 2





	Five Times Enlightened

**_one._** There are not many people who can make him sit still, not when there is a world bursting with new experiences, too vast for his imagination to comprehend. A single word from Wisdom stills him every time, and he settles in the grass with his legs crossed. “You know the difference between knowledge and wisdom, don’t you?” it asks, and smiles when it sees how his expression twists.

He knows Wisdom (it stands before him) and he has met Knowledge, who tends to paintings upon the side of a cave far to the east of where they sit. Wisdom wears many shapes, Knowledge wears one. Yet he knows if he is to answer with differences between Knowledge, the person, and Wisdom, the person, he will receive only a stern look in response. “ _Ahn_ …” he hums, in place of an answer. The two words are different in more ways than sound, the impression they leave upon the Fade is unique. “They are not the same,” he decides, “but can they exist without each other?”

“Wisdom may come with knowledge, but it does not guarantee it. The wise will seek knowledge in the unknown world, and wisdom in their own. You may know the fire will burn you, and yet try to touch it all the same. The wise will abstain because they know better,” and with humour in its eyes, it adds, “perhaps because they have tried before.”  


**_two._** “There is always something– _beyond._ ” That word, he thinks, has never sounded more inviting. He thought beyond the walls of his village, he would find the end, but the farther he strays, the farther the world stretches, as though it folds infinitely beneath his feet. “I reach out, but come no closer.”

Wisdom laughs at him, but it does not make him flinch. It laughs, but not cruelly, his ears twitch and yet hear no derision in the sound. “You seek the deepest Fade, Da’Fen, and that is not somewhere you find on a whim. Especially not one borne as you were.” As if to demonstrate, its hand settles on his shoulder, but do not weigh as his would. He has left his body to sleep for weeks, years, but it is an anchor he cannot cast aside. Not when Mythal may have need of more than a sharp mind.

Its hand moves, fingers lifting his chin. “Do not despair,” it says, “I will teach you to find it.”

 _ **three.**_ “It hurts.”

His hand comes over his heart, which aches as though it bleeds. But his body is whole, and leans into Wisdom’s form for comfort. Fingers curl into its fur to forget the touch of lifeless skin, but still the memory plays, overlaid upon everything. Aridhel’s end is persistent. Her final words a whisper in his ear as her life seeps away, and her end begins again. The blow that killed her feels as if it is his own, and he check again for blood, but touches only cold chain mail.

“I know,” Wisdom’s voice is smooth, comforting, and he wants to beg it to not stop speaking. Until it speaks again, and draws dread into his heart: “It will always hurt.”  


His throat closes. He tries to imagine forever, a word that has always felt so full of possibility, now wrought with grief. Unless– “I have seen you erase memories before.” Joy makes and remakes itself with the seasons, and Wisdom takes happy thoughts and spins them into thread. Are his so different? “Can you not take mine, as well?”

Wisdom moves away, pulling from his grasp to watch him with disappointed eyes. “You do not want to forget.”

He prickles at what sounds like an order, as if it knows better than him. He wants to protest, to insist, but this body he chose chokes on his sorrow, and instead, he weeps.

Wisdom’s words come not in sounds, but shapeless suggestions that melt into his skin. It settles its nose upon his shoulder and draws him into an embrace, where his tears wet its fur. A memory is pressed into him, a distant sadness for a friend he has never met, but gratitude, too, that he knew them at all. “It will always hurt, remembering her, but forget her, and she will die a second death.”

 ** _four._** The sky frames Wisdom’s shape as it watches from the sanctuary’s steps. Free elves sprawl out on the grass beyond the doors, a peal of laughter bursts through idle chatter as one splashes another. Wisdom is shaped as they are, its face the reflection of a stranger, but there is never any mistaking it.

“I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see you here,” Fen’Harel confesses as he approaches it. He leans uneasily against the former temple’s walls, arms folding over his chest. Like this, dressed in threadbare robes, the People scarcely recognise him, but Wisdom need not look twice. He feels its recognition as his own. It would take more than a new name to fool it. “You never were fond of this place.” In the centuries he had roamed this land as a god– or, rather, the _shadow_ of one, he could have counted the number of times Wisdom had graced these halls on one hand.  


“I like it better now,” it says, honesty threaded through its words. “This place, these people, I could not deny myself the chance to know them.”  


They both fall silent. His eyes fall upon an elf examining their own reflection, hands touching their face as though they gaze upon something holy. A question settles in his stomach as he tears his gaze away, sweeping towards the distant mountains that surround this place. “You never tried to put me on this path,” he says, his voice subdued. He does not wish for it to sound like an accusation, he knows there is no one to blame but himself, but he cannot help but wonder. “You must have known, or had doubts about where we were headed.”

“Some answers you must find in your own way.” It answers without so much as a moment’s reflection, knowing what he wanted to ask before he had asked it. “And you did.” Its name is Wisdom, but in that moment he feels a flicker of Pride, as though a flame had come to life in its chest.

But it is not pride in itself that lights the fadefire braziers that line the sanctuary walls, casting green across the half-finished murals.

“You have come far, _da’len_. Now it is your duty to help them find themselves, but–” A rare pause, as it stops to laugh. “You have taught yourself that lesson already.”

 ** _five._ **Its scream tears through his mind long after the dream is done. His hands shake as they pour his tea, liquid spilling over the edges into the saucer beneath. His breathing is measured, each inhale three seconds long before he exhales. Each movement is deliberate, done to stitch together his seams as they threaten to tear him apart.

_Wisdom needs him._

The thought threatens to break Solas, his world is reduced to shapes that blur before his eyes no matter how he may try to blink them away. As flat as the murals he painted around the room. Pieces of plans slip through his fingers: he could steal away that night to find where it had been taken. He remembers where, he sees it when his eyes close. A circle, stone outcroppings, elvhen ruins over the rise of a hill, it lay in the Dales and if he make he can make the journey in a few days’ time on horseback.

Magic pulses through his fingers, bringing some of the old world through. It is stable, but he knows he is not strong enough to do this alone.

Wisdom’s voice rings in his head. Not its desperate cries for help, but an older lesson. One passed on to a much younger elf. He runs his fingers absently over a faded burn scar bridged across his knuckles, recalling Wisdom’s directions and the cool touch of a leaf spread over his injury. _“I never knew aloe vera had healing properties,”_ he remembers admitting, to which Wisdom answered:

_“You will never know who can help, if you do not ask.”  
_

The memory soothes him as surely as the aloe vera had drawn the sting from the wound. Solas reaches for his tea, hands steady enough that he will not spill it in his lap. The taste is foul, and his mouth curls into a terrible frown, but its effects wash over him immediately. Dreams do not seem so close at hand.

“Something wrong with your tea?” Thora’s voice falls laughingly upon his ears, and he sees her smiling from the door. He tilts the mug to look at the tea leaves that swim at the bottom, clumped into the shape of a dagger. She had not laughed at him when he explained to her that spirits were not the mindless monsters the Chantry taught, but listened with an open mind. And agreed. Perhaps her approval ends with words, but–

He will never know if he does not ask.

“It is tea. I detest the stuff,” he sighs, setting it down on his desk, “but this morning, I need to shake the dreams from my mind. I may also need a favour.”  


His heart feels poised to drop in his chest, knuckles going white around the arm of his chair. He sees her smile fall, concern knitting her brow, and the sound of her voice steadies his anxiety.

“What’s wrong, Solas?”  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a prompt on Tumblr!


End file.
